MOSCOW MITCH SHANKS THE MAGAts

This morning, the bipartisan bill created by Susan Collins and Joe Manchin, The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act, to revise the Electoral Count Act and prevent the shenanigans that were planned in 2020 from happening in 2024, had 22 Senators signed on as supporters - 11 Democrats and 11 moderate Republicans, the Republicans being a sufficient number to assure the bill would overcome the inevitable MAGAt filibuster when it came up for a vote.

This evening, the bill has 23 supporters - 11 Democrats and 11 moderate Republicans, and one Republican senator who by signing on to support just shanked El Jefe Del Merde A Loco.

That would be Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the honorable senior senator from Kentucky.

Whatever else you want to call Mitch, you will never use the word “unserious.” Mitch McConnell is a Very Serious Politician, “as serious as a heart attack” as the saying goes, and he hates the unserious, the clowns. “Clown” is another word one would never use describing him.

By all accounts, McConnell really was Very Seriously Pissed about the January 6 insurrection. He did mean what he said at the time about Trump being personally and morally responsible for the event.

In announcing his support, McConnell said the “chaos” of the pro-Trump attack on the Capitol last year “certainly underscored the need for an update.”

“I strongly support the modest changes that our colleagues in the working group have fleshed out after literally months of detailed discussions. I’ll proudly support the legislation, provided that nothing more than technical changes are made to its current form.”

He wasn’t ready to lead his Senators in killing Trump politically with a guilty vote in Impeachment 2.0, but this is different.

Voting to kill the insurrectionist antics by making them illegal means a vote for his kind of Republican politics and a shank in the back of the clowns. It’s a nice solid kick in his mushroom for El Jefe Del Merde A Loco.

It’s also proof that McConnell, now 84, is not going to remain in the Senate past this term of office. He just took control of his legacy.

The Senate bill would make a number of changes to the Electoral Count Act, and the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, in an attempt to address ambiguity in electoral law that Trump tried to exploit.

It would increase the number of House and Senate members required to raise an objection to election results when a joint session of Congress meets to certify them. One House member and one senator can currently object to electoral votes, sending them to a vote in Congress; If either chamber rejects the objection, the votes are counted. The Senate bill would require the support of one-fifth of each chamber to raise an objection. The House bill would raise the threshold even higher – to one-third of each chamber – to force both chambers to vote on whether to throw out a state’s electoral results.

In an effort to respond to Trump allies who tried to send fake electors to Congress, both bills try to make it harder for there to be any confusion over the electors themselves. In the Senate bill, it states that each state’s governor would be responsible for submission of a certificate that identifies electors, eliminating the potential for multiple state officials sending multiple slates of electors. But the bills differ in how lawsuits challenging election results can be taken up in federal court, with the House bill offering new avenues to sue, something some key Senate Republicans oppose (and which will now likely be out, as the price of McConnell’s move).

Both bills establish the vice president’s role as purely ceremonial. The Senate bill would deny the vice president the power to “solely determine, accept, reject, or otherwise adjudicate or resolve disputes over the proper list of electors, the validity of electors, or the votes of electors.”

By McConnell’s act, the House will be forced to accept the Senate’s version; however, this means a larger majority vote in the House because some House Republicans who opposed the House bill that was drafted by Democrat Zoe Lofgren and Republican Rep. Liz Cheney signaled they could support the Senate’s plan (since it doesn’t have Cheney’s fingerprints on it) instead.

“The resulting product - this bill, as introduced - is the only chance to get an outcome and to actually make law,” said McConnell. “It keeps what’s worked well and modestly updates what has not.”

Myself, I would like a stronger update, just like I would have preferred a larger and stronger Build Back Better Act. But I was fine with the Inflation Reduction Act. And I will be fine with The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act.

That’s because I long ago learned that in politics, you never say “no” to a win. A big win, a little win; a win is a win. Nothing in life is perfect and that is even moreso in politics.

This gives us the opportunity to live to fight another day.

The art of politics is what Churchill described in his plans on becoming Prime Minister in May 1940: never never never never never never never give up.

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